In the Fall They Leave by Joanna Higgins

Author:Joanna Higgins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Resolve

Their cook, Amelia, comes over to Marie-Thérèse in the dining room at lunchtime the next day and none too quietly gloats over the fact that five twenty-pound bags of flour and five of sugar unexpectedly arrived at the clinic’s kitchen that morning. The driver wouldn’t tell her anything. “But we know who sent them, don’t we, Fräulein Hulbert? You must have had quite an afternoon!” She cackles with the evil gusto of a Baba Yaga.

Liese, across the table, smirks. Others begin calling out, “Brioche! Streusel! Cinnamon rolls!”

Marie-Thérèse states that she isn’t going to eat anything the cook makes with that flour and sugar. But hardly fazed and so joyful to be able to bake again, the cook only pats her back and fairly shouts, “Très bien!”

Her resolve doesn’t last. There’s brioche, and sugar for coffee and tea, and cinnamon rolls, the holiday scent winding through the dining room and finding its way even into the lecture hall. Cinnamon.

“Do you think,” she asks the matron in her sitting room, “that he might possibly have some motive? After all, Liese is the pretty one. She was there that day too.” It’s difficult to look directly at the matron, her own sense of guilt and unworthiness still so strong.

The matron studies her. “I’ve noticed that you have a tendency to demean your own qualities and abilities, mademoiselle. I’ve been wondering why. You’re an exceptional student, a lovely pianist, and even a fine skater”—here, she smiles—“and yet you so often question your abilities. In addition to the qualities I just mentioned, you also strike me as someone with integrity.”

Integrity. Absolutely not. A few weeks earlier all this praise might have toppled her. And it would have provided emotional sustenance for weeks. Now it only augments the sense of guilt.

“What motive do you think he could have?” the matron goes on. “Did he ask about the clinic?”

“No. Just my family, mainly, and my choices. He said his father wanted him to be a pianist.” She relates his story. “I don’t know. Could he have been fabricating in order to…build trust, create some bond between us? The coincidence seemed so remarkable. Too much so.”

“But sometimes life is like that, no? The striking coincidence one can hardly believe. Let’s assume that what he said is true. So then, his only motive might be that he’s drawn to you because you have so much in common and also because you are a beautiful young woman. Not merely pretty. You have something deeper.”

Heat infuses her face. “But I feel that if I continue to allow this man to visit or if I go to events with him, it will be a betrayal of everyone here as well as of my country.”

“Whether you are betraying yourself should also be of concern. And too, there is this question: Do you want to take the whole person into consideration or do you want to judge based on a generality?”

“I understand,” she says finally. “I judged Private Schalk on a generality at first and then got to know him.

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